Richmond Scholars

BluDog
Wed, 19 May 2010 20:35:00 +0000

I waited a while to post this; hopefully this might help some future applicants in a similar situation.

Richmond was a great fit for me except for the cost. I was hoping to be in the running for one of the school’s big scholarships…I was sadly mistaken. I did not even make it to the semi-finalist round! Here are my stats:

School: large public school in suburban Philadelphia
unweighted gpa: 4.0
class rank: 4/1000+
Classes: All honors or AP
5 AP classes (chem: 5; CalcAB: 5; Stat: 5; EngLit: ?; CalcBC: ?)
Com College course: CIS/Java Programming
ACT score: 33
SAT scores: 2080 (self reported on common app) – I think this was my problem
E/C: Soccer (school and club); Baseball (school and club); Leo Club(officer); Volunteer hrs
Recommendations: I believe very strong (I did not see them)
Essays: Richmond essay might have been a little weak because of topic; Common App
essay and additional science essay were considered very strong by English
teachers; I thought they were really good.

I was accepted by Richmond, but I thought I would crack the top 500-600 applicants that I understood get recommended as semi-finalists…not a peep. Shortly after April, my Dad called and later I emailed Admissions, just to hoping to understand how selections were made and what they felt were my weaknesses…no response.

Congrats to those that received the awards. You must have very impressive stats! Richmond did offer me a $13K need-based grant together with loans and work study; total was about $6K short of my parents’ FAFSA need. I am thankful for the grant, but I did not think I could manage that level of debt and still go to grad school.

Hope this helps someone in future years!